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“ What a-fool you are, Jack,” was the half-jovial, 

half-sneering remark of Mr. Gregory Henderson, well- 
known to the frequenters of the Union-Pacific Club as 
the most incorrigible idler, poker-player, champagne- 
drinker, horse-racer and lady-killer in the membership 
of that locallv-famous and aristocratic rendezvous of the 
gilded youth of the metropolis of the Pacific Coast. 

“Complimentary, by Jove!” was the rejoinder of Jack 
Mortimer, confidential clerk and practical manager 
of a certain respectable business house, and whom the 
aforesaid idler, poker-player, etc., etc., honored with his 
friendship. 

“Wasn’t intended to be complimentary in the least, 
my dear fellow. Meant all I said and all that the words 
could be held to imply,” replied the other coolly. 

“ Then perhaps you will have the goodness to explain 
yourself. I am not accustomed to such a confoundedly 
free-and-easy use of my name as that. We have all heard 
of Satan rebuking sin, but who are you, anyway, to crit¬ 
icise me for following your illustrious example ?” 


Copyright, 1891, by A. H. Ten Broeck 





“ Precisely. You’ve no business to follow my example, 
I tell you. I have nothing else to do, and if I had I 
wouldn’t do it. I shall seek my virtuous couch about 
daylight, probably, and wake to a brandy cocktail at the 
hour when your father and mine were accustomed to sit 
down to their noonday meal. 

“ As for you, old fellow, you will be crawling down to 
Pine street about ten o’clock with a splitting headache 
and an awful uncertainty as to where the cash is to come 
from to pay for all this. I repeat it, you’re a fool, and 
there are a dozen others just like you in this room. You 

call this seeing life.-it, it’s death, that’s what it 

is, and I’ve been in the swim long enough to know. 


“ What business have Smith and Jones and Brown and 
Robinson to be here playing poker and bucking the 
tiger? Where do they get the money to pay their losses ? 
As for me, my old father made enough, and tied it up, 
too, where I can’t touch the principal, to gratify my 
simple and inexpensive tastes in cigars, horse-flesh and 
champagne. 

“ But when I think of you young men in California, 
not only throwing your money and yourselves away on 
this cursed round of dissipation, but throwdng away the 
glorious opportunity of developing the grandest country 
the Lord ever made, as well as making no end of money 
for yourselves, it simply puts me in a rage. 

“ I can sit here and count a dozen fellows,'''respectable, 
intelligent, in receipt of good incomes, who are just going 
to the devil, and: who need a thorough renovation, and 
that soon, or it will be everlastingly too late. 

“ I’ve traveled pretty much all over this terrestrial ball 
at one time or another, and there is nothing like the 


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opportunities to be met with right here on any other por¬ 
tion of the footstool, at any rate where a white man can 
live with any comfort. 

“ Why, just look at the soil and climate of California, 
which will grow to perfection the fruits and flowers of 
every country under heaven. This State will have ten 
millions of inhabitants while some of you are living, and 
could support the whole population of this country to-day. 
Some of you fellows might handle the world’s supply in 
many different lines, might control a commerce vaster 
than we have yet dreamed of as possible, if you would 
only leave off being idiots and begin to be men. 

“ I don’t often preach, as you know, but you ought to 
cut this business and set a better example before the 
juniors in your establishments. If you are ever going to 
take the lead in commercial affairs, you must change 
your course, or some of the steady-going youngsters 
whom you affect to despise, will go under the wire a long 
distance ahead of you. Drink, gambling and late hours 
never yet made a business man, but hell is full of those 
this life has unmade. Some of you wer^ born to be 
leaders. You have been so in ways that are dark and 
tricks that are vain, and ought to right about march and 
show what you can do as leaders in the right direction.” 

“ Oh ! if that is all, keep right on, Henderson. I always 
did like a good, rousing sermon, that is, in my church¬ 
going days. But, if I remember rightly, after a soul¬ 
stirring exhortation our old pastor used to clinch his 
argument with around of sledge-hammer logic which the 
good deacons referred to as the application. You’ve 
been warming us up well, and now what do you want us 


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to do ? You have outlined a scheme of vast possibilities,, 
somewhat vaguely, and now, pray enlighten us as to 
how men in subordinate positions, without capital, can 
carry such plans into execution ?” 

“Make your own capital. Study the capabilities of 
your own section and adapt your methods to the demands 
of the great and growing markets of your own land and 
of the foreign countries most easily attainable. 

“ Look at what our county has done within the past few 
years in creating a new industry of far-reaching import¬ 
ance. Ten years ago the idea that this State would be 
shipping raisins across the Atlantic would have been 
laughed at. One little pocket among the foothills in 
Solano County has marketed this season three-quarters 
of a million dollars’ w T orth of fruit. 

“ A few months ago I was stranded for nearly all day 
at a little station in the southern portion of the State by 
an accident to a locomotive. It was hot, dusty and lone¬ 
some, and I cursed my luck with a vengeance. I wandered 
up to a village near by and soon fell in with a middle-* 
aged gentleman whose empty sleeve at first proclaimed 
him a veteran of the Grand Army, but whose youthful 
appearance did not seem to warrant such a conclusion. 
But he was a business man from the ground up—for about 
six feet—and his particular business was to so impress 
Kern County upon the mental organism of every man he 
met that he would be certain never to forget it. 

“ Then he introduced me to a little man, better known 
in San Francisco as an M. D. than as a land sharp, but 
boiling over with energy, his snapping black eyes and 
contagious enthusiasm, exceedingly well calculated to 
interest the new*comer in search of a home. 


4 


%t They offered to show mO the country, and all that 
day their easy carriage and fast span was devoted to giv- 
ing myself and a fellow-traveler an insight into the won 1 - 
derful changes and improvements that have been taking 
place there. 

“ I saw more of the magnificent San Joaquin Valley on 
that occasion than I ever saw before, or, rather, I saw it 
differently. It lay spread out before me, a garden of the 
gods. There the grizzly had made his home, monarch of 
all he surveyed ; there vast herds of cattle almost as wild 
had grazed, before an American foot had trodden its soil; 
and there oceans of golden grain had waved in the breeze. 

“ But what a revolution ! Intersected by a network of 
canals and ditches, carrying the water of life to tree and 
vine and flower, dotted here and there with pretty cottages 
and farm buildings, with vineyards miles in extent, and 
young orchards just coming into bearing, there unrolled 
before me a panorama of beauty and suggestiveness such 
as no other land, and, I verily believe, no other section 
of this land can show. 

“ Every acre of that great valley will some day support 
a human being. There is more wealth in California’s 
soil than has ever come from her mines or ever will. 
Plant and develop that magnificent tract of virgin soil, 
force competition in land and water transportation by 
making the absolute necessity for it so plain that the 
wayfaring man, or, as the next revision may read, the 
railroad man, though a fool, cannot make a mistake about 
it, and there is untold wealth and unlimited pow r er for 
you in the not far distant future. The only question is 
of brains and capacity; of intelligence and well-directed 
effort. 


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‘ ‘Combine and develop some small holding at first if that 
is all you can dp, or invest in some of the corporations 
formed for the same purpose. Put your surplus earnings 
into such an enterprise for a few years, and before you 
know it you will have the foundation of a business and a 
fortune. This same M. D. has successfully floated no 
less than half a dozen such companies, the stock of the ear¬ 
lier ones being worth to-day four or five times the original 
outlay. 

“ Every young man who is earning more than is abso¬ 
lutely necessary for his support is criminally negligent if 
he fails to invest in some enterprise which has for its 
object the progress and development of his own section 
of country—if he fails to look forward and prepare him¬ 
self to the best of his ability to take such a position in 
the financial and commercial world as the best possible 
use of his natural powers and acquired advantages for 
improvement may entitle him to. The young men of 
to-day have the future of the country in their keeping. 
If they show an enlightened public spirit, a comprehen¬ 
sive grasp of affairs and practical sense in their adminis¬ 
tration, there is no position of power and influence to 
which this commonwealth may not aspire. But it is use¬ 
less talking. To-morrow will be with you all just like 
to-day, only more so.” 

“ Hold on, Hen. We are only waiting for you to 
catch your breath to ask where you learned so much 
and what set you off on this new tack, anyway. The 
town is full of schemes to make money out of the unwary 
investor,—what is yours ? ” 

“ Well, here is an announcement of an enterprise which 
seems to me to have been formulated with much more 


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than the average of forethought and consideration. The 
promoters appear to have studied the subject carefully; 
and to have avoided the rock upon which so many others 
have foundered; that is, the effort to make terms appar¬ 
ently so easy as to induce people to assume obligations 
beyond their power to sustain, only to find a woful gap 
between receipts and expenditures—and resultant failure. 

“They have taken time to perfect their organization— 
to secure the best possible tract of land—a full section to 
begin with—to make contracts for all heavy work when 
labor is cheap, and to avoid the extra expense and inevit¬ 
able loss in having to do everything on the American 
plan; that is to say, in such a rush as to preclude the 
possibility of more than half doing it. 

“ From all I can learn the management of this corpora¬ 
tion includes among its members gentlemen peculiarly 
well qualified to make the affair an assu,red success. The 
Superintendent has the reputation of being not only one 
of the most honorable and reliable of men, but one of the 
most intelligent, thorough and progressive fruit and 
raisin growers in the State. The management and the 
stockholders are to be congratulated upon securing his 
services at any cost. His development of the Rosedale 
Vineyard, in Kern pounty, is considered a remarkable 
piece of work, and hundreds of visitors have testified to 
their appreciation of the results of his labors there. 

“ You cannot do better in my opinion than to inter, 
view the Secretary of the Occidental Fruit Company, 
at his office 415 Montgomery street, Rooms 3 and 4, San 
Francisco, where he will be happy to furnish you with 
copies of the prospectus, subscription blanks, and any 


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further information that you may wish, and if you should 
happen to meet the Doctor there, which you are very 
likely to do, unless he is showing Kern County to some 
prospective purchaser, he will confirm all I have said, 
and proveto you beyond the shadow of a doubt that your 
future prosperity if not all hope of future happiness 
depends upon your taking a more or less lively pecuniary 
interest in the stock of that company. I have said. 
So mote it be.” 



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